The Bat and the Two Weasels

A blundering bat once stuck her head / Into a wakeful weasel's bed; / Whereat the mistress of the house, / A deadly foe of rats and mice, / Was making ready in a trice / To eat the stranger as a mouse. / 'What! do you dare,' she said, 'to creep in / The very bed I sometimes sleep in, / Now, after all the provocation / I've suffer'd from your thievish nation? / Are you not really a mouse, / That gnawing pest of every house, / Your special aim to do the cheese ill? / Ay, that you are, or I'm no weasel. ' / 'I beg your pardon,' said the bat; / 'My kind is very far from that. / What! I a mouse! Who told you such a lie? / Why, ma'am, I am a bird; / And, if you doubt my word, / Just see the wings with which I fly. / Long live the mice that cleave the sky! ' / These reasons had so fair a show, / The weasel let the creature go.

By some strange fancy led, / The same wise blunderhead, / But two or three days later, / Had chosen for her rest / Another weasel's nest, / This last, of birds a special hater. / New peril brought this step absurd; / Without a moment's thought or puzzle, / Dame weasel oped her peaked muzzle / To eat th' intruder as a bird. / 'Hold! do not wrong me,' cried the bat; / 'I'm truly no such thing as that. / Your eyesight strange conclusions gathers. / What makes a bird, I pray? Its feathers. / I'm cousin of the mice and rats. / Great Jupiter confound the cats! ' / The bat, by such adroit replying, / Twice saved herself from dying.